Arianna Huffington

When millionaire socialite Arianna Huffington co-founded The Huffington Post six years ago, she intended it to be an antidote to the right-wing news website The Drudge Report. Not only did she achieve her goal, but Huffpo, as it’s more commonly known, has emerged as a full-blown internet newspaper, which covers a wide array of topics, employs over 200 people and reaches some 25 million readers a month. It’s no wonder that AOL, led by Tim Armstrong, forked over $315 million in February 2011 to buy the groundbreaking site, a merger that will reportedly create one of the most widely read online media corporations, with a combined base of 117 million unique visitors a month in the United States alone. Huffington will become president and editor-in-chief of the merged group's combined media division, thus solidifying her place as one of the most influential women in media.

Appeal

Arianna Huffington is a Greek-American whose Mediterranean charm has transfixed the U.S. media elite. The outspoken intellectual had two great loves in her life: famed journalist and broadcaster Bernard Levin (their relationship ended when he refused to get married) and oil millionaire-turned-Congressman Michael Huffington, whom she divorced in 1997 (he admitted to being bisexual shortly after). Today, Huffington is as gloriously seductive as ever -- with her perfectly maintained coif, penchant for pantsuits, impossible accent, and camera-ready smile. If there’s a sexier 60-year-old media mogul and internet entrepreneur out there, we’ve yet to meet her.

Success

We doubt that Arianna Huffington could have ever predicted just how massive her political blog The Huffington Post would become when she, Kenneth Lerer and Jonah Peretti founded it in 2005. But what began as a decidedly left-wing, relatively bare-boned refuge for liberals has evolved into a comprehensive news outlet that covers everything from politics and entertainment to green issues and divorce. Huffington has steered her baby en route to becoming the second most-visited online news source after The New York Times, boasting a staggering 25 million readers a month. In 2006, the entrepreneur was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine's list of the world’s 100 most influential people. In 2009, she made number 12 on Forbes' first-ever Most Influential Women in Media list. Her rankings should improve this year after AOL’s purchase of The Huffington Post for $315 million made the outspoken intellectual president and editor-in-chief of the merged group's combined media division. Say hello to the new Queen of All Media.

Arianna Huffington Biography

Arianna Huffington was born Ariadne Anna Stassinopoulos in Athens, Greece to a journalist and sometime newspaper-mogul father and an eccentric mother. Though Huffington was close to her father, her relationship with her mother would shape her life. When she was nine, she convinced her mother to leave her husband, who had had a myriad of affairs with various women. Even during her formative years, Huffington demonstrated the leadership skills that she would later become known for. She moved to England at the ripe age of 16 to attend Cambridge University, where she would eventually become president of The Cambridge Union Society -- only the third women to do so. Huffington graduated from Cambridge with a master’s in economics and moved to London shortly after. There, she began a relationship with the celebrated journalist Bernard Levin, who she had met previously when they were both panelists on the television show Face The Music. The two would eventually split up after he refused to marry her, but Huffington would go on to say that he was indeed the one great love of her life.

Arianna Huffington Welcomes Success Early

Arianna Huffington was just 22 years old and one year removed from Cambridge when she wrote the first of 10 career bestsellers, The Female Woman, which called into question certain early strains of the feminist movement. The book was a sensation, and Huffington was in demand. After the overwhelming strain of fame led her on a personal spiritual journey, Huffington wrote her second book, After Reason, which argued for spirituality’s inclusion in modern politics. The book’s mediocre sales forced Huffington to take on work elsewhere, so she began contributing work to the British editions of Vogue and Cosmopolitan, along with the Daily Mail and the Spectator.

Arianna Huffington Comes To America

The year was 1980, and Arianna Huffington’s relationship with Bernard Levin had ended when she went to New York to promote her third book, a biography of Maria Callas. The book sold extremely well, Huffington was a hit in the big city and began to fraternize with the city’s social elite. She was elegant, charming and intelligent, but many accused her of social climbing, being power hungry and being desperate for attention. Huffington played the role of exotic socialite for nearly half a decade but grew weary of the frivolity of it all, and in 1984 moved from New York to Los Angeles to work on her fifth book -- this one on Picasso, of which she would later be accused of plagiarizing parts.

Arianna Huffington Enters Politics

Arianna Huffington met her husband, Michael Huffington, the heir to a Texan oil fortune, when she was 35 years old. They would marry six months later (Barbara Walters was one of Huffington’s bridesmaids). In 1992, Huffington’s husband was elected to Congress as a Republican, but many perceived that she was the one pulling the strings for her husband, even becoming part of Newt Gingrich’s inner circle. But none of this would prepare her for her husband’s ill-conceived run for the Senate, in which Huffington earned the reputation as a modern-day Lady Macbeth, a conniving, ruthless manipulator who would stop at nothing to get what she wanted. Her husband ultimately lost the election, but Huffington remained undeterred, becoming one of the Republican Party’s most vocal mouthpieces.

Arianna Huffington Becomes A Democrat And Runs For Governor

We can thank Al Franken for converting Arianna Huffington from a Republican to a Democrat. The liberal comedian teamed with Huffington for Comedy Central’s Strange Bedfellows, a special that covered the 1996 presidential election. During their time together, Franken would slowly pick away at Huffington’s Republican ideals (even playing her absurd clips from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show) until she finally realized that her beliefs and those of the Republican Party clashed tremendously. Huffington’s move to the left was met with a lot of skepticism, with critics claiming that the newly-single Huffington did so just to be accepted in liberal Hollywood.

In 2003, she ran as an independent against Arnold Schwarzenegger in California’s gubernatorial elections but dropped out after a disastrous campaign had her sinking drastically in the polls. She would eventually finish fifth.

Arianna Huffington Creates The Huffington Post

When Arianna Huffington -- with the help of a large investment from Kenneth Lerer and his family -- decided to start liberal blog The Huffington Post, she enlisted many of her famous friends to contribute. Rather than random, anonymous voices, Huffpo featured a who’s who of the country’s intellectual and social elite. Norman Mailer, David Mamet, Al Franken, Bill Maher, Walter Cronkite, Deepak Chopra, Warren Beatty, Rob Reiner, John Cusack, Mike Nichols, Norman Lear, and Gwyneth Paltrow were all early contributors. The site was a hit, and by 2009, HuffPost Chicago, HuffPost New York, HuffPost Denver and HuffPost Los Angeles were all operational. With an active community with 25 million unique visitors and one million user comments a month, Huffpo has become one of the most influential websites on the internet. AOL’s recent takeover made Huffington the editor-in-chief of a handful of websites (including Engadget, TechCrunch, Moviefone, MapQuest, AOL Black Voices, PopEater, AOL Music, AOL Latino, Autoblog, Patch, and StyleList) and, thus, the most influential woman on the internet.